The Lewisham Vietnamese community makes up a large portion of the total local population and is one of the UK's largest Vietnamese communities, however there is a severe healthcare inequality facing particularly the elderly demographic has been well documented in recent years.

This project aims to address this inequality by providing a series of 10 workshops/support sessions to the local Vietnamese elderly and their carers. These sessions will occur once a week and will aim to provide long term health benefits to the community by imparting healthy lifestyle habits to combat cultural habits that aggravate healthcare issues, information on how to overcome cultural and language barriers in order to better access local healthcare services and community support sessions. All of these sessions are focused on delivering outcomes that will educate the community to be more self-sufficient in future.

What we'll deliver:

Host 1 drop-in medical checkup session.

Host 3 community support lunches during the course of the 10 weeks to foster an open dialogue about healthcare.

Provide 2 aerobics workout sessions that teach simple exercises that the elderly can learn and do at home.

Provide 2 information sessions run by an interpreter/facilitator about latest healthcare news and services.

Why it's a great idea:

Around one-third of the total Vietnamese community in London resides in Lewisham and its surrounding areas. Yet the local area is notably lacking in providing healthcare support to this community, a problem that was significantly raised during a healthcare dialogue event FORVIL hosted with the NHS last year at which the local Vietnamese community aired their views.

One major concern is that basic information about accessing health care services is not being sufficiently or effectively disseminated to this population. This means that local services are not being made use of efficiently. The language barrier also means that this community is also unable to receive basic healthcare information about healthy lifestyle habits, further aggravating healthcare issues. There are local translation services, however feedback from the community for over the past 3 years has shown that these are heavily over subscribed and not feasible as a long term solution.

Steps to get it done:

We have over 20 years' experience of delivering community based workshops and sessions.

We have strong links with the local Vietnamese community and are able to outreach to this traditionally reclusive group.

We have a strong, committed steering team with experience of delivering community events to oversee the project.

We have an experienced producer to oversee the budget.

We have existing relations with external contractors for exercise, healthy eating and health info.

Similar sessions have been organised and held by FORVIL previously and have always been very popular and successful with hugely positive attendance rates. The elderly whom FORVIL have reached out to before have reported feeling more confident with managing their healthcare issues following such sessions and have also given additional feedback that these events have a positive impact on the state of their mental health.

By hosting these events, FORVIL will be investing in the long term heath-care benefits of the elderly Vietnamese demographic. In this way, we hope to be giving back to the community and lessening the current strain on community healthcare services and the local NHS.

About the Project Creator

FORVIL is short for “Federation of Refugees from Vietnam in Lewisham”.

FORVIL is a charitable voluntary organisation, serving the local community since April 1992, the centre acts as a focal point for Vietnamese elders and carers, where they can gather and receive mutual support. Since then FORVIL has developed more and more services to meet the needs of not just elders and carers but also of other members of the Vietnamese community, helping to connect the community with local services such as the NHS and providing translation and language support.